State Department Proposes January Release of Hillary Clinton Emails

More than 50,000 pages of emails from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state might not be made public until early 2016, according to a State Department court filing on Monday.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed this year, the State Department said that reviewing 55,000 pages of exchanges from Mrs. Clinton’s private email account would be labor-intensive and time-consuming.

Noting the considerable public interest in the emails, the department “is endeavoring to complete the review and production of them as expeditiously as possible,” said John F. Hackett, acting director of the Office of Information Programs and Services at the State Department. “The collection is, however, voluminous and, due to the breadth of topics, the nature of the communications, and the interests of several agencies, presents several challenges.”

The State Department is proposing a date of Jan. 15, 2016, for releasing the emails.

The department is dividing the material into small batches, with plans to review about 1,000 emails a week. In addition to the State Department’s Freedom of Information Act office, subject-matter experts within the department will review the emails before their release, as will other government agencies when relevant, including the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council.

“Currently, this project is staffed full time by a project manager and two case analysts, as well as nine FOIA reviewers who devote the entirety of their time at the State Department to this effort, plus other analysts and information technology specialists who provide collateral assistance to this review in addition to their regular duties,” the filing stated. “The team managing this project has met daily since early April to implement and oversee this large undertaking.”

The proposal, made in response to a lawsuit by Vice News, was filed in United States District Court in Washington on Monday.

In the coming days, the State Department is expected to release just under 900 pages of Mrs. Clinton’s emails related to Libya and the attack on the American outposts in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.